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What, exactly, is a “US Day of Rage?” Well, on September 17th we
may find out for certain, but until then, The Blaze is revealing
what information does exist about this very nefarious-sounding
campaign.

A US Day of Rage is the title given to a day
of ostensibly “non-violent” civil disobedience orchestrated
by a group of radicals — that reportedly includeSEIU’s Stephen Lerner and ACORN founder Wade Rathke
(who, coincidentally, formerly served as president of SEIU’s
local New Orleans branch) — targeting Wall Street and U.S.
capitalism. It’s worth noting that the title of the movement — if
its intentions are indeed non-violent in nature — appears to
contradict itself slightly.

But what is perhaps even more interesting than its title is
who is allegedly behind the movement.

Now, the US Day of Rage protests, staged by a collective of
activist groups allegedly in conjunction with Lerner
and Rathke, are planning the actual “occupation” of Wall Street
September 17, complete with a tent city set smack-dab in the
middle of Manhattan’s financial district. Similar protests
are purportedly set to take place across the nation — and even
world– at the same time. Some Day of Rage organizers are even
calling on activists to squat in Manhattan’s financial district
for months.

The Blaze’s report on Lerner, who serves on SEIU’s
International Executive Board, caught the union agitator stating:

So, a bunch of us around the country are thinking about who would
be a really good company to hate? We decided that would be
JP Morgan Chase. …. And so we’re going
to roll out over the next couple of months what will hopefully be
an exciting campaign about JP Morgan Chase that is really about
challenge the power of Wall Street. And so what we’re
looking at is in the first week of May, we get enough people
together – we’re starting now – to really have a week of
action in New York with the goal of … I don’t want to go into any
details because I don’t know which police agents are in the room,
but the goal would be that we would roll out in New York
the first week in May.

Then, like clockwork, some 400 activists brought Lerner’s dream
to fruition and converged on JP Morgan Chase’s annual
shareholders’ meeting in May — this time in Columbus, Ohio rather
than New York. The group that staged this particular protest, the
National People’s Action, reportedly confirmed it was there as
part of its “Showdown in America” campaign against the big banks.
Since the location of JP Morgan Chase’s meeting was surrounded by
a moat, the activists, who likened themselves to Robin Hood, even
brought a collapsible bridge to “storm the castle.”

It is also perhaps worth noting that in March, The Blaze reported Rathke and Lerner called
for “days of rage in ten cities around JP Morgan
Chase.” Rathke mentioned some of Lerner’s key
assertions:

While labeling Lerner an ex-SEIU official who was signaling
that unions and community organizations were “dead,” also
reported hook-line-and-sinker that in May, according to Lerner,
there would be days of rage in ten cities around JP
Morgan Chase signally the beginning of the anti-banking
jihad.

So it might add up now that Klein Online reported Rathke’s efforts are
being organized by Lerner, who, as part of his planned
protests, called for “a week of civil disobedience,
direct action all over the city:”

The planned Sept. 17 day of rage seems to be the
culmination of Rathke’s efforts.

Those efforts are being organized by
Stephen Lerner, an SEIU board member who reportedly
visited the Obama White House at least four times.

The aim, according to Lerner, is to “destabilize the
folks that are in power and start to rebuild a
movement.”

“How do we bring down the stock market? How do we bring
down their bonuses? How do we interfere with their ability to, to
be rich?” Lerner asked rhetorically in
March.

So, it appears, Columbus could have been one of the ten U.S.
cities en route to New York for the “big day.”

Listen to The Blaze original video from March where Lerner, who
has been dubbed a domestic terrorist, reveals his true intentions
about JP Morgan. Then read further as we explain how the upcoming
Day of Rage campaign in September could actually serve as the
launchpad for Lerner’s war against JP Morgan and Wall Street as a
whole:

Below is Lerner’s response to The Blaze’s audio that captured his
damning statements:

In a follow-up report later in March, The Blaze revealed that Lerner penned an OpEd
in a progressive publication outlining his campaign to bring down
the economy and “stoke simmering discontent into
concrete, concerted direct action“ in a move to ”turn the tables”
on Wall Street.

But the Days of Rage campaign might go even further than
originally thought. While one US
Day of Rage website is somewhat vague about its slated
activities, other Days of Rage organizers are quite bold in
revealing their intentions to occupy Wall Street September 17 for
literally months in a kind of ” US Tahrir Square.“AdBusters published a
statement by a group dubbed ”Culture Jammers” that states:

On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into
lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and
occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we
shall incessantly repeat our one simple demand until Barack Obama
capitulates.

…there is a very real danger that if we naively put our cards on
the table and rally around the “overthrow of capitalism” or some
equally outworn utopian slogan, then our Tahrir
moment will quickly fizzle into another inconsequential
ultra-lefty spectacle soon forgotten. But if we have the cunning
to come up with a deceptively simple Trojan Horse demand …

Inspired by the visceral potential of the Wall Street
occupation, the Indignados of Spain just sent us word that
on September 17th they too will set up camp outside the
Madrid Stock Exchange. The surprise
announcement, that their #TOMALABOLSA will join your #OCCUPYWALLSTREET, may embolden other cities as
well. A rumor suggests the financial district of
Paris may be next … or will it be Toronto’s Bay Street,
Sydney’s Martin Place, or some yet to be chosen site in London?

Then on October 6th another kind of encampment begins in
Washington, DC.

With a bit of luck, and the right mix of nonviolence
and tenacity, S17 just might cascade into a Tahrir Moment on an
international scale – wouldn’t that be something?

We call on jammers across the world to occupy financial
districts on September 17:

But if a group of enraged activists — endorsed by the likes of
Stephen Lerner — occupying Wall Street with tent cities were not
enough — it actually gets worse. The term “Day of Rage” finds
origin in “Days of Rage,“ a violent
set of riots waged in Chicago in 1969 by theWeathermen’s Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. The
Weather Underground terrorist organized his “Rage” in an attempt
to bring troops back home from Vietnam. Similarly, this most
recent US Day of Rage is co-organized by a group that calls
itself “The War Resistance League.”

Yet despite Ayers’ initial claim that his Day of Rage, too, would
be “non-violent,” during the four day rampage that started in
Chicago’s historic Lincoln Park, the Weathermen arrived in
full-clad battle gear, helmets and weapons in tow, and
called on activists to kill the rich and even their own
parents.

During an interview with Chicago Mag, Ayers, with no regrets, summed
up his riot’s intended purpose, stating, ”kill all
the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the
revolution home, kill your parents—that‘s where it’s really
at.”

As if inciting legions of radicals to kill anyone — rich or poor
— were not abhorrent enough, Ayers and crew took it that one step
further by calling on people to murder their own parents. One
wonders if those taking part in the newly reborn Day of Rage,
staged by ACORN and SEIU affiliates, harbor the same deep seated
blood-lust and penchant for violence in their own hearts.

Ayers went on to explain away his Day of Rage, saying, “the
rhetoric was excessive because the times were excessive.”

“The war had escalated, so naturally the language escalated. No
one thought I meant that literally.” But as it turns out, Ayers
did.

As the Weathermen marched on, smashing windows and vandalizing
property through the tear-gassed streets of Chicago, nearly 300
militants were arrested and over 60 people were injured. Some
reports estimate the damage climbed to hundreds of thousands of
dollars, which, four decades ago, was a steep price indeed.

But, never breaking with character, the remorseless Ayers
trivialized the destruction, stating that ”the Days of Rage
was an attempt to break from the norms of kind of acceptable
theatre of ‘here are the anti-war people: containable, marginal,
predictable, and here‘s the little path they’re going to march
down, and here’s where they can make their little statement.’ We
wanted to say, “No, what we’re going to do is whatever we had to
do to stop the violence in Vietnam.’”

Similarly, two of the activists from the new Day of Rage revealed
similar intentions when they explained that physically “putting
your body in the way” of an injustice is more effective than
traditional means of non-violent protests.

But to Ayer’s delight, his Days of Rage ended with his band of
radical protesters marauding the streets of Chicago causing
complete destruction.

“The streets became sparkling and treacherous with the jagged
remains of our rampage,” a nostalgic Ayers wrote about his
window-smashing ”crystal chaos.”

Meanwhile, the broader US Day of Rage movement, that also
operates under the moniker, “Occupy Wall Street,“ states it is an
”idea not a party” and lists its basic tenets and principles on
the official website. Under the heading “We Have Had Enough,”
Day of Rage states:

Legitimate government is born of the self-interest and will of
the people expressed by its citizens in free and fair
elections. It does not spring from a tyranny of special
interests, patronage, or a system or ideology that runs counter
to the aims of life.

The institutions of government were designed to protect the
principles of our democratic republic and to serve the will of
citizens.

Corporations, even those owned by foreign shareholders, use
money to act as the voices of millions, while individual
citizens, the legitimate voters, are silenced and demoralized
by the farce.

US Day of Rage’s mission statement also says it is “here to help
facilitate state and city level organization, and to organize the
federal protest at the U.S. Capitol.”

So now we will have to wait and see what becomes of the latest
Days of Rage incarnation. We are, however, given a little insight
into the thinking some organizers of the US Day of Rage via
several informational videos posted on
Rage’s website.

The “how to” videos and“handbook” on civil disobedience provided
by the movement’s organizers do include instruction on how to
resist arrest and disrupt court hearings. Not a hopeful sign they
intend to remain on the “civil” side of disobedience.

In the video, one of the organizers even likens his movement
to Gandhi’s. We wonder what Gandhi would say about the use
of the word “rage” at all, let alone if the protests turn
out the same, violent way the Weathermen’s did. Will these new
radicals, lead by SEIU’s Stephen Lerner, rampage through the
streets of New York, vandalizing property, injuring people and
wreaking havoc until the tear gas is deployed? We shudder to
think.

Below are two US Day of Rage informational videos and a copy of
their “Handbook for Nonviolent Campaigns” can be found here.

Followed by a video that came under a section titled “Jailhouse
Solidarity” that deals with legal issues that can arise from
engaging in protests: